With its landmark climate legislation in jeopardy, the Biden administration has announced a series of new executive actions to accelerate the US’s transition to a clean power grid. On Wednesday, the White House said it would allocate billions toward projects that lead to the construction of more wind, solar and geothermal energy across the country.

Specifically, the administration announced it’s moving forward with the lease of six commercial areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey for use in wind farm projects. On offer is more than 488,000 acres of ocean seafloor for the winning bidders to build an estimated 5.6 and 7 gigawatts of clean power generation. As part of the bidding process, the White House says it will incentivize participants to support labor jobs and to source turbine components from American manufacturers. The New York Bight development is one of the primary pillars of the Biden administration’s plan to build out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind production by 2030.

Another significant facet of today’s announcement is the “Building a Better Grid” initiative. Pulling from the $65 billion Congress set aside for power grid upgrades when it passed President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the initiative earmarks $2.5 billion toward funding the installation of new transmission lines. It’s putting another $3 billion toward an expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, which supports projects that increase the capacity and flexibility of existing electrical infrastructure.

The administration notes it will also allocate $10 billion in grants to states, tribes and utility companies to help those groups strengthen their local transmission lines. Taken together, the investments will help modernize the country’s power grid, making it easier to transport renewable energy from remote generation sites to where it’s needed most. It will also harden the power grid against the kind of extreme weather events that have become more commonplace as the effects of climate change have worsened.

Today’s announcement sees the White House putting forward meaningful climate policy, but if the Biden administration is to have a chance of meeting the president’s ambitious goal of decarbonizing the country’s power grid by 2035, it will need to bypass the legislative gridlock that has left the Build Better Back Framework in limbo. Much of that will depend on whether the White House can convince Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to support the approximately $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill.

Source: Engadget – Biden administration announces new measures to upgrade power grid

If you thought the PC market’s pandemic-era renaissance would continue throughout 2021… you guessed correctly. Canalys estimates PC shipments jumped 15 percent year-over-year to 341 million despite supply shortages. Simply put, many of the customers in 2021 were adding new PCs rather than replacing existing ones. Remote students and seniors were purchasing first computers, for example, while multiple systems were “more common” in some areas.

Some PC brands had a better time than others, though. Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer held on to their respective top-five positions in shipments, but Apple and Acer were the shining stars after growing deliveries over 20 percent compared to 2020. Frontrunners Lenovo and HP had the slowest growth of the leaders in 2021, and saw their shipments fall in the very last quarter where other rivals grew. Their size didn’t help them capitalize on expanded demand for computers, to put it another way.

It also seems likely that 2022 will be similarly bright. Principal Analyst Rushabh Doshi predicted the new year would be one of “digital acceleration” as people shift toward high-end PCs and accessories that help with remote work. It’s too soon to say how accurate that prediction might be, but it coincides with a PC revival we saw at CES — competition appears to be as fierce as ever.

Everyone’s favorite pink Nintendo mascot, Kirby, is returning to Switch very soon. Nintendo announced that Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the character’s first 3D platformer, will arrive on the console on March 25th. It previously said the game would be out sometime in the spring.